These men are prisoners at MCI-Norfolk, part of a growing inmate work force that manufactures products from bunk beds to blue jeans to American flags, reupholsters furniture, silk-screens T-shirts and makes customized signs.

The prison-run business, known as Massachusetts Correctional Industries, or MassCor, has been around for years supplying state agencies and municipalities.

But sales have picked up, especially to the public, since a Web site – http://www.masscor.us, now being redesigned – launched in 2005. This fiscal year, officials project the program will take in $10.8 million. Higher revenue has led to a 50 percent work force expansion in the past five years, to 485 inmates.

Vinicio Rodrigues, 41, from the Dominican Republic, is one of the workers. Nine months into a nine-year sentence for drug trafficking, Rodrigues was welding a new bunk bed on a recent morning. A big man with a thick Latin accent, Rodrigues said his first prison job was mopping floors, but after being accepted into MassCor, a fellow prisoner taught him to weld.

Another is George, a 54-year-old with eyeglasses and tattooed arms, who was stitching together a bed mattress in a section where inmates reupholster furniture.

PRICE TAGS

$20.95 package of a dozen polyester/cotton boxer shorts

$19.95 blue denim, light-weight jumpsuit

$9.25 gray sweatshirt

$1,450 full-size presidential desk

$6.15 cotton-filled pillow with nylon/vinyl cover

$42.15 4-by-6-foot Massachusetts flag

$2.99 Masonite clipboard, with 6-inch clip

$242 ash wooden chair, with cherry stain

Page 2 of 2 - $77.50 twin-sized mattress

$25.86 20-gallon corrugated trash barrel

$4.60 100% cotton bib apron

$8.90 women’s long-sleeve, blue chambray shirt

Source: State Department of Correction

“When you walk out that door, you’re going to need a little money,” George said. “Without that, you’re done.”

After five years, George said he has made thousands of beds for college students, hospital patients and prisoners, saving $2,200 in the process. He declined to give his last name, and said he was convicted of breaking and entering.

The operation spans nine facilities, said James Karr, director of MassCor.

Mike Walker, superintendent of the program at Norfolk, said many inmates enter prison with little education and no marketable skills.

“This gives them a good start, a little money in the pocket, a sense of purpose and a schedule,” he said.

Department of Correction Commissioner Harold Clarke said an expansion of the program is needed to cut down on prison-yard idleness and equip more inmates with skills and a work ethic.

He said half of the state’s prisoners were unemployed when they committed their crimes, yet fewer than one in 20 inmates work in the program.

“They lack vocation and lack job skills,” Clarke said. “It’s very important we provide … these skills, something they can rely on to make a living once discharged.”

Specifically, Clarke said he hopes to get approval this year to create an office focused on marketing existing products. At the same time, Clarke said, more research is needed to determine if the skills inmates are learning translate into jobs after prison.

Benjamin Dunbar, the correction officer overseeing the metal shop, said there is anecdotal evidence.

“Oftentimes I’ll get a phone call from outside and hear someone is now working in the metal fields,” Dunbar said.